Month: October 2013

Categories
Politics

Judge Slaps Down Issa’s Request to Ignore the Shutdown and Pursue his Case

A federal judge was less than amused when Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) requested that a lawsuit he filed two years ago be allowed to move forward in spite of the fact that federal courts have been immobilized by the Republican shutdown of the U.S. government. According to Think Progress, Judge Amy Berman Jackson refused to consider violating the shutdown to handle the case, saying that it’s ridiculous for Issa to make the request, considering his caucus’ role in ordering the government to close.

Issa filed a motion as part of his House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s failed investigation into supposed misdeeds by the Department of Justice in the “Fast and Furious” operation. Issa is still attempting to order Attorney General Eric Holder to hand over confidential documents or risk being held in contempt of court.

The motion insisted that a “Contingency Plan provides that Department employees may continue to work on matters necessary to the discharge of the President’s constitutional duties and powers,” and therefore his actions against President Barack Obama and the Justice Department should not be affected by the federal work stoppage.

Judge Jackson responded, “There are no exigent circumstances in this case that would justify an order of the Court forcing furloughed attorneys to return to their desks. Moreover, while the vast majority of litigants who now must endure a delay in the progress of their matters do so due to circumstances beyond their control, that cannot be said of the House of Representatives, which has played a role in the shutdown that prompted the stay motion.”

In other words, Jackson told Issa that if he wants to continue his quixotic campaign against the White House and Department of Justice, he and his cohorts in the House should lift the shutdown order.

Categories
Domestic Policies Martin Luther King Politics

MLK Breaking Bad on Economic Injustice

You may have never heard Dr. King like this before. At a time like now, THIS VOICE is surely missed and needed.

The Poor People’s Campaign, organized by the SCLC and Dr. Martin Luther King to take this message to Washington. Three weeks before it was to take place, King was assassinated on April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee. The march went on as planned but with King killed, the movement lost a lot of its heart.

The Poor People’s Campaign was founded on the idea that all people should have what they need to live. King and the SCLC began focusing on economic justice after observing no real gains in the lives of the majority of African Americans after the Civil Rights Movement.

The POC was a multiracial effort aimed at alleviating poverty regardless of race, demanding economic and human rights for poor Blacks, Chicanos, Native Americans, and White Americans.

Categories
Celebrities

Lauryn Hill Released from Prison

DANBURY, Conn. (AP) — Grammy-winning singer Lauryn Hill was released from federal prison Friday and will spend three months under home confinement under terms of her guilty plea to failing to pay taxes.

Hill’s attorney, Nathan Hochman, said the former Fugees singer left the prison in Danbury, Conn., on Friday. She was sentenced in July to serve three months in prison.

“Ms. Hill was released today from federal prison after serving her sentence,” Hochman said in an email. “She was released several days early based on a number of factors the Bureau of Prisons takes into consideration, including good behavior. She will now start today a one-year period of probation with three months of home confinement during that year.”

Hill, who started singing with the Fugees as a teenager in the 1990s before releasing her multiplatinum 1998 album “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill,” pleaded guilty last year in New Jersey to failing to pay taxes on more than $1.8 million earned from 2005 to 2007.

Categories
Politics

President’s Weekly Address – End This Government Shutdown Now

In this week’s address, President Obama said that Republicans in the House of Representatives chose to shut down the government over a health care law they don’t like. He urged the Congress to pass a budget that funds our government, with no partisan strings attached. 

The President made clear he will work with anyone of either party on ways to grow this economy, create new jobs, and get our fiscal house in order for the long haul – but not under the shadow of these threats to our economy.

Categories
Health News

Miriam Carey Suffered From Postpartum Depression – Video

Miriam Carey

 

Idella Carey, mother of Miriam Carey killed at the hands of Washington police Thursday, said her daughter began suffering from postpartum depression after giving birth in August 2012.

Mariam Carey was shot to death outside the U.S. Capitol after trying to ram her car through a White House barrier.

Interviews with some of those who knew the Stamford resident suggested she was coming apart well before she loaded her 1-year-old daughter into the car for the 275-mile drive to Washington, D.C. Carey had sustained a head injury in a fall and had later been fired as a dental hygienist about a year ago, according to her former employer, Dr. Brian Evans, a periodontist in Hamden. He wouldn’t say why, only that after a few weeks out from work, she returned and was terminated.

Federal investigators believe that Carey drove straight to the nation’s capital and that the violence unfolded immediately upon her arrival.

After ramming into the barricades, Carey, apparently unarmed, led police on a chase down Constitution Avenue to the Capitol, where she was shot in a horrifying chain of events.

Amy Carey-Jones, a sister of Miriam, said on CNN’s ‘Anderson Coopers 360’ Friday that there should’ve been “another way instead of shooting and killing an individual.” Another sister, Valerie Carey, said their sister “did not deserve to have her life cut down” at age 34.

A next-door neighbor, Erin Jackson, said Carey doted on her daughter, Erica, and was pleasant. Jackson said. “She seemed very happy with her daughter, very proud of her daughter.” The daughter was miraculously unharmed and was taken into protective custody.

Experts say symptoms of postpartum depression include lack of interest in the baby; mood swings between sadness and irritability; scary thoughts of something bad happening to the baby; and, in severe cases, suicidal thoughts.

Police say they’re confident Carey’s actions weren’t an accident, but that she intentionally meant to ram into the guard barrier surrounding the Whitehouse.

Categories
Celebrities New York

Madonna Reveals She Was Raped in New York

Madonna seems to have it all when it comes to fame and her career.

While she is living a lavish life these days, it turns out that she was taken to rock bottom when she was just 19 years old, right before her fame days came.

In the newest issue of Harper’s Bazaar, Madonna opens up about moving to NYC for the first time and being raped on top of a roof at knife-point.

In the last two decades of her fame, the “Like A Prayer” singer finally reveals details about a night she will never forget.

She tells the mag:

‘New York wasn’t everything I thought it would be. It did not welcome me with open arms. The first year, I was held up at gunpoint. Raped on the roof of a building I was dragged up to with a knife in my back.’
‘I was defiant. Hell-bent on surviving. On making it. But it was hard and it was lonely, and I had to dare myself every day to keep going,’

Categories
News

Hundreds of Migrants Dead After Ship Sinks Off Italian Coast

The tragedy of African migrants who pay with their lives to reach Europe to escape poverty or some type of persecution or another occurring all around this great, big world of ours, became a human drama, as hundreds perished in a matter of hours off the Italian coast on Thursday.

A 66-foot smuggler’s boat, carrying 500 migrants from Eritrea, Ghana and Somalia, caught fire near the Lampedusa port, Italian authorities said. Panick struck those onboard who stampeded to one side, causing the boat to flip over and carry hundreds of men, women and children, many of whom could not swim, overboard into the Mediterranean Sea.

Italian coast guard boats carrying divers headed out from the southern island of Lampedusa again on Friday to recover more bodies but choppy waters hampered their search for the hundreds still missing. On Friday officials said 155 people were rescued, but with an estimated 250 people still missing the death toll of 111 is expected to rise. Four babies and one pregnant woman were among the dead.

Pope Francis called Friday “day of tears,” denouncing the “savage” system that he said drives people to leave their homes for a better life, yet doesn’t care when they die in the process. Though many of the vessels carrying these emigrants aren’t even seaworthy, migrants still attempt the journey in search of a new life, with plenty of traffickers who’ll take their money. Smugglers often charge thousands of dollars a head for a spot on these overcrowded, battered boats with the obligatory ‘no life jacket’.

Fortress Europe, an Italian observatory that tracks migrant deaths, reported that at this time of year, when the sea is fairly calm, boats carrying migrants from Africa and the Middle East land on Italian shores almost every day. An astonishing 6,450 people have died in the Canal of Sicily alone between 1994 and 2012.

A young Tunisian man, believed to be one of the crew members and a suspected trafficker, has been detained. Prosecutors have opened an inquiry for multiple murder, and one for facilitating illegal immigration.

Categories
Politics

Crying Baby Throws Boehner Tantrum – Video

A new attack ad is out and it compares Republican House Speaker John Boehner to a crying baby.

Although the ad is meant to be funny, it has some truth to it. John Boehner known, at least in my circle of friends, as the Washington cryer.

Categories
paycheck Politics

After Shutting Down The Government, This Republican Cried, “I Need My Paycheck!”

They all voted with joy to shut down the government – a move that amounted to yet another failed stunt to get rid of Obamacare. Their government shutdown move immediately caused 800,000 workers to be sent home without pay. But Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC) told WTVD in Raleigh, N.C. that she won’t be giving up pay during the government shutdown because, well… as she puts it, “I need my paycheck. That’s the bottom line.”

Watch the hypocrisy below.

Categories
Healthcare ObamaCare Republican

This Die-Hard Republican Fell In Love With ObamaCare

Butch Matthews and his wife Debbie

Butch Matthews is a 61-year-old former small business owner from Little Rock, Arkansas who used to wake up every morning at 4 A.M. to deliver canned beverages to retailers before retiring in 2010. A lifelong Republican, he was heavily skeptical of the Affordable Care Act when it first passed. “I did not think that Obamacare was going to be a good plan, I did not think that it was going to help me at all,” he told ThinkProgress over the phone.

But after doing a little research, Matthews eventually realized how much the law could help him. And on Tuesday, his local Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) provider confirmed that he would be able to buy a far better plan than his current policy while saving at least $13,000 per year through Arkansas’ Obamacare marketplace.

Matthews was self-employed between 1997 and 2010, meaning he had to purchase his own plan on the individual market. He chose a Blue Cross Blue Shield plan for himself and his wife that charged a $250 per month premium and had a $2,000 deductible. But the price of that policy kept rising even as it covered fewer of his costs, eventually devolving into his current rate of $1,069 per month with a $10,000 deductible. At this point, it doesn’t even cover his medication or doctors’ visits — particularly concerning considering he had to have two stents placed in his heart in 2006.

“I do not work now, I’m 61, and we do have assets saved up. But still, to come up with that $1,069 per month….” he said, trailing off. “I went to Blue Cross Blue Shield, and they don’t even sell that plan anymore, but I could not change it to anything else. So I was locked in with it.”

That all changed once Obamacare’s state-level marketplaces opened to the public on Tuesday. Matthews knew that, at his income level, the law would help him pay for insurance. But even he might not have expected just how good of a deal he could get: his new coverage will cost him absolutely nothing in monthly premiums after factoring in federal subsidies, and has a deductible of $750.

“Which is a lot different from $10,000,” he pointed out, laughing.

The mid-level “Silver” policy that he picked out also offers a significantly better benefits package. “It’s a lot better plan,” Matthews said. His old plan was considered to be “Bronze” and had much higher co-pays. Under Obamacare, when Matthews visits a doctor, it will no longer cost him around $150. It will cost $8.

So what would Matthews tell other Americans who are skeptical about Obamacare? “I would tell them to learn more about it before they start talking bad about it,” he noted. “Be more informed, get more information, take your time and study and not just go by just what you hear on one side or the other. Actually check the facts on it.”

“I still am a very strong Republican, but this… I’m so happy that this came along,” he continued.

Categories
Politics

Republican Peter King – ‘I Honestly Don’t Know’ What GOP Wants From Shutdown

Yet another Republican who cannot figure out what they are trying to get from shutting down the government. We previously heard Marlin Stuzman of Indiana say he doesn’t know what Republicans want. And now Peter King of New York is joining that chorus.

If these Republicans don’t know what they want, why are they insisting on keeping hundreds of thousands of workers furloughed and causing even more damage to the economy?

Video

Breaking News
Categories
Politics

Democrats to Start Discharge Petition to End GOP Shutdown

It’s all an effort to end the Republican government shutdown.

House Democratic leaders will begin circulating a discharge petition Friday in hopes of forcing a vote on a “clean” spending bill.

GOP leaders have so far refused to stage a vote on the Senate-passed continuing resolution (CR), insisting that the measure also include conservative provisions scaling back President Obama’s healthcare law.

But with more than 20 centrist Republicans indicating support for a clean CR, the Democrats are hoping they can attract the 218 signatures required to force such of vote.
The Democrats’ gambit is a long-shot, however, as there’s no indication that those centrist Republicans would poke their leadership even further by signing the discharge petition. 

Indeed, those Republicans have sided with Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on a series of votes this week to fund the government with piecemeal bills – a strategy rejected by Obama and the Democrats.

Reps. George Miller (D-Calif.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) launched their discharge-petition effort Friday after an afternoon meeting in the Capitol, where the Democratic Caucus huddled with White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough to discuss the party’s shutdown strategy.

“It is very unfortunate that the majority of the House has not been allowed to freely cast its vote to reopen the government,” Miller said. “But one thing [that’s] becoming clearer is that, as the shutdown drags on, a growing number of Republican members of Congress want the opportunity to work with Democrats to end this crisis.”

Under their petition strategy, Miller said, the House could vote on a clean CR on Oct. 14, at the earliest.

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